America’s Lost Civilization—And How To Rediscover It

The Golden Gate Bridge.

The Empire State Building.

Pretty much every inspiring example of late-19th and early-20th Century American architecture, from the Singer Tower to the World’s Fair pavilions to the original Penn Station in New York City.

Guess who built them? Americans?

Pff. Try the Tartarians.

Their ancient empire apparently built all this and more. Americans couldn’t possibly have built all those masterpieces. We’ve never known how to create such beauty. We still don’t.

Welcome to one of the craziest conspiracy theories in America today. Like any good conspiracy theory, the “Tartarian Empire” is easy to disprove. In fact, Americans built all those bridges, skyscrapers, and inspiring structures. No doubt about it.

But this kooky idea should still cause us to ask a hard question: Why don’t we build beautiful things anymore?

There’s a reason the Tartarian Empire has attracted so many followers in the internet fever swamp. People are looking at the structures and statues of yesteryear, wondering what happened to that sense of grandeur and scale and overpowering confidence.

A century ago, Americans were at the height of our creative power. We built with purpose and passion and irrepressible self-belief. Those world fair pavilions drew the eye and the spirit upward. So did the early skyscrapers and the neo-classical masterpieces that used to anchor our nation’s cities.

Many of those structures have been destroyed, but others haven’t. The Golden Gate Bridge. The Empire State Building. They inspire to this day because they were built to inspire. Our country set an incredibly high bar, then cleared it with room to spare. The Americans who labored on these projects poured their hearts and minds into the task.

But in the past 75 years, we’ve poured a lot of concrete instead. Modernist architecture is an eyesore—an insult to people’s sensibilities. Yet such ugliness is all around us, from museums to schools to government offices. The modernist blight is even evident in scores of churches.

Worse, most of what Americans build today has no architectural style whatsoever. It’s cheap, flimsy, doomed for destruction by the sands of time. Anyone who works in a modern office park knows it. Ditto those living in the newest apartments and cookie-cutter homes. The comparison with yesteryear could hardly be more stark. Our standards have fallen so far that our great grandparents’ works are now mistaken for the creations of a mythical empire.

We can do better. We must do better. And if we’re going to bring out our country’s best, we need to set a high bar once again.

As Rich DeVos wrote in Believe!, accountability is one of the most powerful principles in the world. At its core, accountability means holding yourself and others to a standard of excellence, because only then can you rise to meet it. America needs this principle in so many areas—and architecture is undeniably one of them.

Building beautifully and permanently isn’t as hard as it may sound. Think of how far we’ve come since the early 1900s. We’ve made incredible advances in mathematics, materials science, and design. This progress should make it easier than ever to plan and construct buildings that are really works of art. What on earth are we waiting for?

Some Americans aren’t waiting at all. The “new urbanism” movement is actively fighting for cities and neighborhoods that serve both form and function. President Trump has required that new federal buildings meet a standard of beauty—neo-classical, Spanish revival, and so on.

Such developments are wildly popular, and no wonder. They remind Americans that we can—and should—build for the future. We don’t have to settle for ugliness and utilitarianism. We can create communities that uplift the soul and elevate the imagination. We can still build a country that inspires the world.

Whether in architecture or anything else, aesthetics is a choice. As Americans, we can choose to do what our ancestors did, and build in a way that reflects a profound self-belief. Or we can wallow in the mistaken belief that we have to accept low standards and a lack of vision.

That’s where conspiracy theories like the Tartarian Empire arise. But there is a lost civilization out there—our own. The time has come for Americans to rediscover it, because remembering our past is key to charting a better and more beautiful future.